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Heavy and light in Democritus and Aristotle: two conceptions of change and identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

D. O'Brien
D. O'Brien
Affiliation:
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifíque, Paris
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Extract

Aristotle and Theophrastus are the two major sources for our knowledge of the atomist theory of weight.

In the De generatione et corruptione Aristotle argues that one atom may be hotter than another and that therefore the atoms cannot be impassible, since an atom which is only slightly hot could not fail to be acted upon by an atom that was very much hotter (i 8 325b36–26a14, esp. 326a6–12 = in part DK 68A60). The premiss to the argument Aristotle derives in part from a comparison with weight. It would be ridiculous, he claims, to suppose that hotness and coldness belong to the atoms, but that heaviness and lightness, hardness and softness do not belong to them (326a6–8). And in fact, he continues, Democritus does claim (καίτοι…γε… φησίν) that each of the ‘indivisibles’ is βαρύτερον…κατὰ τὴν ὑπεροχήν (a9–10). Aristotle has already supposed that one kind of atom, a round atom, may be accounted as hot (a3–5). The use of the comparative for weight (βαρύτερον) Aristotle now takes to justify the use of the comparative for heat (θερμότερον a10–11): from this there follows the argument that the atoms cannot be impassible.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 97 , November 1977 , pp. 64 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1977

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References

1 This article summarises, except for the final section, a much longer study of which the first volume will be published soon in Philosophia Antiqua. The pages on Democritus were read to a session of the Third International Symposium on Ancient Philosophy held at Toledo in the summer of 1974 and presided over by Professor W. J. Verdenius. I am particularly grateful for the criticisms made at the conference by Professor Verdenius and Mr Peter Bicknell. I am also most grateful for their criticisms to Mrs K. M. Burnett, Mme F. Zaslawski and Dr S. V. Keeling. The whole paper has also benefited greatly from a series of lucid and very useful criticisms made by Dr G. E. R. Lloyd. I would emphasise that in this paper I have deliberately set out to present an overall view of a wide range of evidence, consciously leaving aside many of the difficulties which the interpretation of each piece of evidence has given rise to in the past. There is a much more detailed analysis in my longer study of the subject: meanwhile, the simplified treatment of the present version is, I hope, justified by the attempt to provide in a short space a single view of a complex subject which has not hitherto been treated as a whole.

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4 Cherniss, , ACP 211Google Scholar n. 253. Guthrie, History ii 403 n. 2: the reference to Cherniss in Guthrie's History should be corrected to conform to the reference that I have given.

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